Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

He had woken up sweating, frightened at first, and then angry and not terribly surprised that Matthieu had found something else to make him feel guilty about.

“Boring old man,” he said under his breath, meaning both his brother and this flaccid cardinal who could sleep only on his stomach, his ridiculous white ass pointed up to the top of the canopied bed. Robert was nearly thirty-five now, but taut and lean, not yet showing his age; Cardinal Pierre Cyriac was an out-of-shape sixty, and Robert intended to throw himself from a tower before he let his body look like that.

He heard a sound in the streets below, outside the high walls of the house, beyond the little grove of Spanish clementines the cardinal had planted every May only to have the mistral kill them each December.

A woman crying, now shouting, “No! No! No ,” banging a fist on wood to punctuate each word, and another woman, crying more quietly, trying to hush her.

Another plague death, as like as not, all the more stinging because the disease was actually loosening its grip on the city, only killing scores a week instead of hundreds. Robert hated this time, less because he feared death than because the cardinal did; and because the cardinal did, he had forbidden his concubine to go out into the streets without him. He wanted to watch every move the younger man made, to assure himself that he kept a safe distance from strangers, that he did not go to the baths, that he did not linger too long in the market and risk bringing it home. He had sneezed once a few days before, and the old man had looked so coldly at him that he thought he might have him thrown from the house if he sneezed a second time.

He did not.

The Arabian had finished his hay now and would not suffer himself to be caressed further tonight. He didn’t mind the saddle, but he seemed to hold men’s hands in contempt. Robert slapped him briskly on the shoulder, earning himself a displeased whinny, and walked back toward the house, Guêpe nosing the door of the stall for a second leaf, which did not come.

Robert thought he might reread his boring old brother’s last letter, in which he fell all over himself in thanks for the wine he had been sent. It was sweet, really, how easy it was to please Matthieu. And, however dull his company, he had been a comfort during the time of their youth in their monstrous father’s monstrous house.

He would ask the cardinal for another small barrel, from the pope’s personal vineyard this time, to be sent north when next His Holiness sent an envoy to Rouen. Lots of envoys were going north these days, asking for money and tradesmen and men-at-arms for the crusade.

What was the name of his brother’s sad little town? St. Martin-something? It was a bother, but it would be worth it. He could see Matthieu’s hands turning the tap, Matthieu’s eyes lighting up when he saw the color of the vintage coming out of the spout, Matthieu’s sad, grateful smile exaggerating the lines around those eyes. It made him feel warm enough to face going upstairs. One more goblet of something strong and he would crawl in beside the belly-sleeper, moving as lightly as a mosquito on the skin in hopes he would not wake him and be handled.

The marketplace off the rue de La Vielle Fusterie was nearly deserted. It was still too early. The military men who had been filling the city stayed up late doing what soldiers do in towns where they are not known, and they had set Avignon’s hours back even further; he had passed two squires heading back across the Pont St. Bénézet who looked as though they had not yet gone to sleep. Now that the monks had all died, nobody rose before Terce anymore, and most waited for midday.

The cardinal had left the house, and now Robert had sneaked out for a vial of the cedar oil he loved to smell on himself—the pope had called for a grand feast tonight, another whoring feast, and he hoped to make good impressions all around—but the oil merchant’s stall was empty. It was hard to know who was dead and who was simply out of things.

The swarthy little man who sold wine from the pope’s vineyards was doing a good business, his loader rolling barrel after barrel under the emblem of the crossed keys, but the other wine sellers had closed up shop. Nothing was coming from Beaune or Auxerre but fantastical stories, and most of the vineyards near Mont Ventoux had also gone still. This year’s harvest was dying on the vine, and last year’s was nearly gone.

There just weren’t enough people left to work.

Except in Pope Clement’s vineyards.

He was a man who got things done.

Robert missed his days, only three years gone, working as cubicular to Pope Clement, who wanted no more from Robert than his help getting dressed, the lighting and snuffing of candles, and a little conversation when he couldn’t sleep.

Everything had gone to hell since the Holy Father had made a gift of him.

With no oil to show for his walk across the bridge, Robert was determined to find some satisfaction. In the early evening he would have to look at the old man’s disappointed smile as he failed to express a profound enough opinion on some religious matter, the smile that reminded him he was prized for his beauty, not his competence. He would have a few more hours until then, while the cardinal signed his papers and rattled his rings in the palace. The cardinals did little work, as far as he had ever seen, their duties spiritual rather than temporal; it was the apostolic secretaries and chancellors, and even the pontiff himself, who shouldered the real work at the palace.

Cardinals mostly discussed things, like some troop of self-important gossips in bright red robes and wide red hats. Sometimes one would go off as legate to this or that city, and could be gone a year or more, but in Avignon they sat on cushioned benches and talked about whether women went to the same Heaven as men, or if the queen of Naples had really strangled her boy-toad of a husband. They talked about Cola di Rienzo’s thuggish uprising in Rome, as if they still had any business with that city that the papacy had divorced, or as if they meant it when they talked about the pope returning there, or as if they even had an Italian among them anymore now that Colonna had died of the Pest. They sat drowsing through canon lawsuits, saving their better selves for the evening’s diversions. They waited for the pope to die so they could wall themselves in to squabble about which one of them would take his hat, and what favors he’d do to get it. They welcomed important men to their gardens and received gifts. They dallied with lovers far too attractive for them.

As much as he held them in contempt, Robert envied them more.

He often looked at his hands and wondered how they would look in fine white gloves, and rings of emerald and tiger’s eye over those gloves.

Since the marketplace had more cats than people in it, he would have to find another way to kill the hour or two he dared to stay gone from the cardinal’s house.

So he went to the apartment of the pope’s second falconer, a red-haired, smiling boy whose moss-stuffed bed crunched with dried lavender; he had a woman in that bed but, seeing who was coming up his stairs, woke her, sent her on her way, and put two shirts down over the stain they had left.

The cardinal’s man was a rarer guest.

And a prized one.

“I know you value yourself highly,” the cardinal said, as Robert counted his teeth with his tongue to prevent him from fully hearing the old man’s words and letting his face betray his thoughts. “But I don’t want you speaking tonight unless you are spoken to, and then it shall be to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ followed of course by a few respectful words. Yes, my lord. Yes, Your Eminence. No, I have enough bread.”